Hi guys and welcome. I’m Philip English of RoboPhil.com and on this video, we are doing a quick interview on Morgan Roe of Engineered Arts. We managed to speak to Morgan at the InnoRobo 2015 Robot Exhibition in France Lyon.
Engineered Arts are experts in designs and manufacture interactive humanoid robots for commercial entertainment and research applications.Trusted by customers such as NASA, PESTO, UNC Chapel Hill and many national science and museums world wide, they make robot that suits around budget and expectations.
Philip: Hi guys! So we’re here with an interesting robot and can you introduce yourself and your company please.
Morgan: Hi! My name is Morgan Roe, I worked for a company called Engineered Arts based in UK and we build robots for communication and entertainment. So robots that can tell you about themselves and how they work, technology behind them but also sing a song and entertain you with stories and jokes.
Philip: Okay. I can see, I mean, this is the first time I saw a robot quite entertaining. It’s moving its head and its face.
Morgan: Yeah! Well, this particular one here it got Force Feedback in the neck, it can actually sense the force you are applying to it and move accordingly and because it’s gotten into any projected face, so it’s going to project at the back of the head. This whole face is procedurally generated on so when I move it can change the whole facial expression depending on the way you move it.
Philip: It is very interesting! Is it a boy version as well or
Morgan: Well, because it’s an internally projected face, you can actually put anything you want on it. This one, yeah, we got a female but of course it could be a male, but it could be a creature, could be a cat, could be a comic, a skulls, it could be anything you like.
Philip: I see, I mean, we have a lot of schools, on education, I think, they will really really love it, specially some of the special schools as well, definitely here, the kids might grab this around and make interaction.
Morgan: It is not the interaction that we are really interested in. The interaction between a robot and a human, human-robot interaction and it’s really helpful to have this style of face and emotion, you can actually see what’s the robot feeling, you can be happy and sad and then you can interact with it.
Philip: So, can it speak or talk, is there any sort of feature voice thing that can get the mouth to move
Morgan: We actually do have that. We can make the robot talk and we even have a text speech engine. So you can literally type anything you like and the computer will basically turn that into speech and the computer will also, stretch the image of the mouth on a projected face, to make it look like that she’s actually talking.
Philip: That it actually doing a conversation.
Morgan: Yeah!
Philip: Okay. Now that looks like brilliant products. So do you sell these like is across Europe?
Morgan: We sell this across the world, we have, our robots are in probably 27 to 30 countries around the world these days and also in spaces, university and science centers, technology centers, museums.
Philip: Wow! That is brilliant. So what’s the future? What is your future vision for this?
Morgan: Well, for this in particular, there are couple of different application areas that we would think that could end up with, one being in retail, point of sale, or any even in the shop front, you can actually have this robot. This robot will actually look at your face and it will detect your gender and estimate you age, so you can use that information to them, point you towards promotions of the day, some products and other applications, could be maybe check in desk at an airport, as well as baby in the home for companionship for the interaction they might not get so much as human to human, robot is pretty good replacement.
Philip: Yeah! I think we are seeing it in Japan more like, they got hotels that pretty much run by themselves and this is basically a perfect thing, check in and go to the rooms
Morgan: Instead of tapping on the screen, it is much better to have a face, and much better than tapping you name on the screen, that it actually talk to the robot
Philip: Brilliant! Brilliant! Well. That’s perfect. Well, thanks for your time today, much appreciate.
Morgain: No problem. Thank you!
Brilliant! Thanks guys! I hope you enjoy the interview and I want to say a big thank you to Morgan Roe of Engineered Arts for his time and the interview.
If you want to learn more about the Engineered Arts, I will put links below for you review.
Engineered Arts Limited: https://www.engineeredarts.co.uk/
Engineered Arts Limited Interview YouTube: https://youtu.be/enVY72fvXbc
Philip English: https://philipenglish.com
Sponsor: Robot Center: http://www.robotcenter.co.uk
